


repetitive motion injury

by alcibiades



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Gen, Introspective Bullshit, Post-Canon, vaguely arthur/eames if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-15
Updated: 2013-08-15
Packaged: 2018-02-13 06:05:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2139879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alcibiades/pseuds/alcibiades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The legend of Arthur lived on even when he was off the radar living some kind of white picket fence dream, and when you come back and see that the stories are still there, it's easier to live up to them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	repetitive motion injury

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Churro Cart (Krackers)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krackers/gifts).



You get hurt.

Of course you do. Thrown down a flight of stairs, punched square in the mouth, slashed with a knife by a scared taxi driver who overheard the wrong thing at the wrong time and then woke up at the wrong time in the wrong room. These things require stitches, a little dental work for the filling that came loose, some time being careful not to bend too fast or stretch too far. But strangely, it's a little refreshing, being hurt in ways that actually heal.

For a while you blame Cobb - mentally, at least. You were on the road with him for so long, and things were so hard that you forgot how to breathe in the spaces in between. And then he betrayed you, all of you, and all you could do afterward was smile at him and tell him that you forgave him, because it would have seemed like a waste to throw away a relationship with a man that you spent nearly two years of your life saving day in and day out. You gradually remembered what had drawn you to him in the first place, the recklessly unfettered visions that he was capable of, the honesty of his smile and the focused clarity of his gaze.

Someone once asked you, when it was all over, "Cobb got what he wanted. Arthur, what did you get?" 

The answer is more complicated than _nothing_. The answer is that you are the person who never asks for anything in return.

Sometimes you wonder: was the reason that your mother and father fought that she felt this same sense of overwhelming mediocrity? The only things that don't feel mediocre to you now are dangerous, and you are not reckless - not like Eames, not like Cobb. You will never be reckless, but now it feels like being inexorably drawn, as a moth to a flame - you find those who are, you apply yourself to them, you make their schemes your own and slowly as drawing poison from a wound, you draw the danger out and make it known, and sometimes knowing a thing is all it takes to make it lose its power.

You miss them, of course you do, but you still know that it is wrong of you to make them take care of you and your problems when you have proven yourself incapable of taking care of them yourself. You hated the idea of being a part of a whole, and you know that you need to make yourself feel whole again before you can go home.

Eventually you start to recognize yourself when you look in the mirror again. You lose a few pounds, not that you need to, but it takes that well-fed, well-rested, well-loved roundness off you, and in the sharpness of your jaw you see the honed weapon that you used to be, always were underneath. Your reputation never went away, anyway; the legend of Arthur lived on even when he was off the radar living some kind of white picket fence dream, and when you come back and see that the stories are still there, it's easier to live up to them.

Some people don't like you, of course; some people will never like you, because you are demanding and you need things to work, but those are the people you don't work with. The jobs you do go as smoothly as you make them, are as predictable as you can make them with the ounce of control that you have over the human subconscious. Nobody asks you about Eames, or Ariadne, or any of them. They know better than that.

You get hurt. You fall down, you get back up. You keep going. You keep going.


End file.
